


Bitter Pill

by DevineMandate



Series: Fall, Bounce, Soar [2]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Angst, Post-Lethal White
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-22 19:23:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21307319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevineMandate/pseuds/DevineMandate
Summary: Strike's with Charlotte.  Robin hates it.
Relationships: Charlotte Campbell Ross/Cormoran Strike
Series: Fall, Bounce, Soar [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557115
Comments: 17
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

"Come on, Bluey, we'll be late!"

"I hear you, Charlotte, I hear you."

Robin watched Strike adjusting his tie one final time, watched Charlotte watch Strike.

"I can't believe that's still your only suit, Corm."

"You can't? You know, if sixteen years' experience hasn't taught you that I'm going to own exactly one suit at a time and use it for as long as possible, you can't have been paying attention."

Charlotte laughed and said, "If sixteen years' experience hasn't taught you that I'm going to mock your insistence that asceticism equals morality, then you're the one who hasn't been paying attention."

Strike laughed, but what Robin heard was nails on a chalkboard.

Charlotte turned to Robin. "What are you doing with yourself this evening, Robin? Big plans? Drinks at the Tottenham? Maybe you'll meet a big, strong man there that wants to take you home instead of one who hurls you down staircases, right?"

Robin blushed. Strike had told her, then. They'd probably been discussing the day they'd split up, and perhaps it had come up that Charlotte had nearly collided with Robin before Strike had nearly killed her. It rankled, Strike handing Charlotte ammunition.

Robin wondered if Strike had told Charlotte he'd saved Robin by grabbing her breast. Certainly not, she thought, or that element would have made its way into Charlotte's oh-so-friendly overture as well. He wasn't giving her everything.

_Oh, but he's giving her_ something _all right._

"Just going to catch up on work a bit. Files to organize, invoices to fill out, that sort of thing."

"I thought you weren't doing secretary work anymore. Junior partner, right?" said Charlotte brightly, trying to obscure the knife twist.

It did not escape Strike, who broke in. "It's the exact same work I do for my own cases, Charlotte. It's just Robin has had a heavier and heavier case load as she gets better at the job, and she covered a lot for me last week when I had to take time off for my leg."

It was pathetic, thought Robin, how grateful she was to him for saying something. She felt like a dog who’d been thrown a treat.

“Ah, I see,” said Charlotte. “To be frank, Robin, that’s as much as I’m expecting to hear from Corm about the business for the rest of the year. He will insist on work and his private life being separate, won’t he? I’m sure he keeps you out of his private life to an obsessive degree.”

Robin could think of nothing to say to this. It was true, and everyone in the room knew it.

“Let’s go, Charlotte,” said Strike.

“Coming, Bluey! Have a good night, Robin. Don’t work too hard; I’ll make sure Corm doesn’t.”

Strike hardened a little. “Actually, Charlotte, could you go downstairs a minute? I need to talk to Robin about a couple of things, and you know how I am about work and private life.”

Charlotte’s eyes flashed. She said, “Naturally, Bluey, wouldn’t want to break in on the two of you having a heart to heart about _the business_.” She left and the impact of her heels on the landing and down the stairs was harder than it had to be.

“I’m sorry, Robin, she’s always been jealous. She sees a pretty girl up here, and she just can’t help but start digging. I’ll try to make it so that you two don’t see each other.”

Robin could almost bear all of it for the opportunity to hear Strike call her a “pretty girl”. It was like living on scraps.

She said, “Surely she knows there have been other women in the intervening years you’ve actually slept with.”

“Well, Robin, the truth is that Charlotte can tell that those women didn’t really matter to me and that you do, so of course you’re the one who gets the brunt of her ire.”

It wasn’t fair. He was breaking her heart; he only said such openly complimentary things about her as a counter to Charlotte’s cruelties.

“It’s all right, Cormoran. I’m a big girl; I can handle a jealous girlfriend.”

“That’s true, handled a lot worse than that with aplomb, haven’t you?”

There it was again. It hurt so much.

“You go on, Cormoran, no need to make her more jealous than she is.”

“All right, Robin. Have a good night.”

“Oh, wait. Do you want me to scoot the Radcliffe file under the door of your flat when I finish up my notes so you can look at it over the weekend?”

“Er, actually, Robin, I don’t think I’ll be back to my flat or the office for the weekend. Do you mind sending a scan over email?”

Not in his flat for the weekend. She saw a palatial bedroom, Strike’s hairy back as his bulk crushed Charlotte’s beautiful figure underneath him. _“Oh, Bluey, I missed you so much, promise you’ll never leave me again.”_

“Of course, Cormoran.”

“Thanks, Robin. Night.”

“Good night.”

He went out and down the stairs. Robin thought to herself: _Don’t go to the window, don’t go to the window, it’ll only hurt more, it’s pitiful, you’re like a teenager, what do you think you’re going to see? Don’t do it, don’t look, don’t do it._

She went over to the window.

As she looked down at the street, she saw them leaving, and Charlotte suddenly turned her face up, and caught Robin's eye. She gave a cheery wink and a wave that would have seemed friendly to a passing stranger, but Robin's blood was boiling and Charlotte could probably see her getting flushed and flustered.

Strike had not noticed, and Charlotte put her arm around Strike’s waist (such as it was), and Strike responded with an arm over Charlotte’s shoulder.

Robin withdrew from the window and walked over to her desk. She stood there, listless and irresolute, and then suddenly she pounded the desk with her fist. She stood there a few seconds, and then she pounded the desk again. And then again. 

No, this wouldn't help, she'd only break her hand to keep her heart company.

Oh but it did truly feel like it was cracking down the middle inside her chest. It felt like it was being crushed in a garbage disposal, chopped up by knives, pureed in a blender. She imagined her heart liquefied and poured into a glass, served at a table where Strike and Charlotte sat, Charlotte drinking it down as Strike looked on, approving. Imagined Charlotte wiping her face delicately with a napkin, then standing up and ripping off Strike's clothes. Imagined Strike removing her clothes with the same intensity, throwing Charlotte onto the table, climbing atop her and...

"Invoices." She said it as though to strengthen herself, and began organizing paper and electronic documents. Perhaps she could concentrate on this for an hour or two, get herself a little closer to the only thing that gave her relief now: sleep.

But though she worked and worked, her stomach twisted and her thoughts ran back to the same ground over and over again.

How could he be with her? What did she offer him?

_Don't be a stupid little girl, Robin. She makes him laugh, she's known him much longer than you. She's been inside his heart for ages… and she's the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. How could he not go back to that kind of beauty, that kind of intensity? And the money probably doesn't hurt either._

_Cormoran doesn't care about money that way. It has no pull for him._

_If that's true, that means he's only with her because she satisfies him emotionally and sexually._

_She's a horrid BITCH and I HATE her._

Robin sat back, surprised at the use of the epithet even in her own head. She didn't use that word, as a rule.

But Charlotte was quietly and not so quietly undercutting, and lording her place as Strike's significant other over Robin, and there were covert glances, and there was silent derision. It was hard to take in addition to the knowledge of their intimacy, emotionally and sexually. If anyone deserved the b-word, it was her. Though frankly, “bitch” was too kind. That word connoted femininity, and Charlotte did not deserve the honor of being called feminine. She was a poisonous snake, not worthy of gender, no matter how beautiful. HOW could Strike be sleeping with her? Was beauty truly that important? To a man like Strike?

_Maybe he felt that way while you were with Matthew._

Curse her traitorous heart and brain.

A week ago, she’d been alone with Charlotte in the office for a moment, and Charlotte had said:

“Sorry to hear about your divorce, Robin, but it sounds like he wasn’t much of a loss. It IS so hard to get hold of a good man,” and then before Robin could say anything, “You’re from Yorkshire, correct?”

“Yes,” said a wrongfooted Robin. “Masham.”

Charlotte’s eyes had flashed down to Robin’s top and then back to her face. “Some beautiful dairies in that area, aren’t there?”

Strike had walked in just then, and left with Charlotte, leaving Robin alone, feeling like she had a coat of slime on her.

_You can't keep working here if it stays like this._

To Robin's horror, this voice in her head was not the whining, mewling voice of jealousy, nor the dramatic, ranting shout of heartache. No, it was the voice of reason.

_I can't leave. The work is going so well. I'm getting better, he said so._

_He only said that to make you feel better because of Charlotte._

_That’s not entirely true, I AM getting better._ Thankfully, there was that at least: she felt proud of herself, felt the good progress she’d been able to make since she’d excised Matthew from her life. Her professional life was going incredibly well. She’d made connections Strike had praised as insightful, she’d evaded people following her on foot and in cars, she’d taken cases from start to finish, hers and hers alone: initial client interview to final invoice.

But all that depended on staying at work. Here. With Strike. And Charlotte.

She couldn’t keep doing this. She had to keep doing this.

Robin switched off the computer, and went downstairs to the Tube, her eyes tired, her brain overworked and filled with ugliness, her heart a punching bag splitting at the seams from too many blows.


	2. Chapter 2

_Is he sleeping with her_ now?

The train rumbled along underground towards Robin's stop. It shouldn’t have mattered to her whether Strike’s perverse copulation with that viper was occurring right this moment or was imminent, but it most definitely did matter to her.

_Now?_

How could she keep respecting him if he insisted on being blind to Charlotte’s essence? That was another reason the thought of leaving work had become realistic in her mind: she wasn’t sure that even if she were not…infatuated with Strike…that even then, perhaps their purely platonic friendship could not survive Charlotte. Robin disrespected his choice in this regard so much that it lowered her opinion of Strike.

_Maybe he felt that way while you were with Matthew._

She brushed this refrain aside. She had left Matthew behind when the matter had become fully clear (she’d certainly let the truth become crystal, hadn’t she, waiting it out like a coward through months of tension and antipathy until Matthew had given her a perfect out).

Matthew was the past; Charlotte was the present.

But speaking of the past...she recounted the women Strike had bedded in the time she’d known him: Ciara Porter, Nina Lascelles, Elin Toft, nameless bloody tart (the phone call to his office from the Maldives), Lorelei Bevan...Charlotte Fucking Campbell Bloody Ross. There were probably others, but those were the ones she knew of. Three of them had meant something to him, three of them not that much, apparently.

Ciara had been the first flash of understanding that Strike was a deeply sexual being--too early to hurt at the time. Too beautiful to not hurt a little in retrospect.

Nina was nothing to Robin because she had clearly been nothing to Strike.

Elin was the first woman that she could say she’d been truly jealous of, even if she would not have called it jealousy at the time. Elin’s sophistication and Nordic beauty had aggravated Robin at times, and Elin had not been warm enough to overcome Robin’s predilection for disliking her.

Nameless bloody tart had really thrown a spanner in the works. What would Robin have said if Strike had answered? Then there had been a year of no real communication with Strike, where she had felt truly isolated as her marriage devolved and the panic attacks plagued her. How would that year have been different if Strike could have just kept it in his fucking pants?

_How would that year have been different if you hadn’t used that bloody infection Matt got as an excuse to not rock the boat? What if you had done the thing you knew was right all along and left the wedding or got an annulment when you should have?_

Yes, it was true. She couldn’t blame Strike for that. She couldn’t even really blame him for nameless bloody tart; he hadn’t technically done anything wrong--but it had stung for Robin that it had come so soon after...

_What was he supposed to think? Let’s pretend he did feel what you did. YOU’D JUST MARRIED MATTHEW. D’you think Cormoran maybe, just maybe, thought that you did so with the intent of staying married?_

Well, no matter what everyone’s true feelings were or what should have happened, it was past, wasn’t it? But Robin thought that moment would haunt her forever. It was one of the two biggest “what if?” moments of her life. The other involved a darkened stairwell, but she would not linger there.

Lorelei had been very difficult for Robin, for she had wanted to dislike her and could not. Robin thought Strike had made an excellent choice with her, and what pain there was had been derived from the fact that Strike was with someone who might truly make him happy.

And then, of course, there was _her_.

The train came to a halt at her stop, and she exited, walking automatically on the path toward her flat, her thoughts still in motion.

Charlotte was unlike any of those women. For one, Strike actually seemed to care significantly about her. For another, the other women in Robin's litany that she'd met seemed like reasonable and decent human beings.

_She's more like a habit than a lover for him, like a drug. He thinks he needs the pain to have the pleasure._

_That’s probably some bullshit psychoanalysis._

_Here’s some psychoanalysis: maybe Cormoran associates Charlotte with a time when his mother was alive._

That brought her up short. She stopped walking, and for a minute, she stopped hating Strike and only pitied him. She hung her head as she thought of his loss, and how he might do anything to hold onto the traces of Leda Strike there were in this world.

_Has a funny way of showing his affection for his mum, getting together with a cruel, heartless bitch._

She kept walking, and now the raw pain of Charlotte being in her life and Strike’s life was coming to the forefront again, making her stomach and chest feel sick. Her feet were leaden and her eyes were dazed as she stumbled through the door of her flat and into her bedroom, trying to keep quiet for the sake of her flatmate.

_Is he sleeping with her…_now?

She got dressed for bed, her thoughts still like rodents chasing each other inside her head.

_I have no right to feel like this._

No, the truth was she’d had no right before. With Matthew around, there had always been a protective barrier. If she felt jealous, her attachment to Matthew kept those feelings from growing beyond certain boundaries.

Matthew and Charlotte. She and Strike really knew how to pick them.

Robin did not miss Matthew as a partner anymore--the first month after the separation had involved a lot of crying, but after that, only very occasionally had she missed him emotionally or in accomplishing the daily and weekly tasks of everyday life, and if that wasn't an indictment of her broken, fruitless relationship, what was? But sleeping alone had proven incredibly difficult at first, and she still missed the easy feeling of sleeping with someone else beside you. Asleep, Matthew had been angelic and warm.

Was he sleeping with Sarah now, still? Maybe he was cheating on _her_ with someone else by now.

She found she did not care, it was more like an academic curiosity. There was only one person whose sexual escapades were torturing her right now.

_Let Charlotte have a massive headache. Let her be on her period._

_Like a headache or her period would stop them from having sex._ She could imagine Strike's accommodating smile as he laid a red towel down for Charlotte to lie on. She could hear the brash tone of Charlotte's voice, the intimate words of a longtime lover: "_Guess the way will be even slicker than usual, eh, Corm?_"

_Fuck! Shit! Bugger! Cock! Arsehole! What is WRONG with Strike?_

_We’ve been over this. It doesn’t really matter. The fact is he is where he is._

_But he’s such a good human being, how can it be?_

_What is it you like about him so much anyway?_

As if her mind had been waiting for this cue, an avalanche of memories bombarded her.

Strike, calling her “a nice person” in a state where many men would have been leering and groping. Strike, buying her the green dress, but not trying to sleep with her. Strike, giving her the job she’d always dreamed of. Strike, encouraging her to grow as a person and a professional. Strike, who truly respected and valued her opinion. Strike, letting her put herself in danger’s way despite his reservations. Strike, who had fired her for misconduct and had Shanker take him to her wedding in a stolen car to rectify his mistake. Strike, who had stonewalled her for a year after the wedding, only for the wall to come down, their friendship stronger than ever. Strike, the sight of whom made Robin’s heart feel like it would float out of her chest. Strike, who was not handsome, but who was dead, _dead_ sexy. Strike, smiling authentically, like a child, still strong and good-hearted despite his years of terrible experiences, because of his years of terrible experiences.

Strike, who was sleeping with Charlotte.

It finally overwhelmed her, and suddenly she was aware that she was going to scream, and she covered her face with a pillow as the ultimate truth came to her. But she couldn't say it aloud, she couldn't, it would make it real, it would break her. But the final, thin veneer of denial was crumbling, and her heart would not let her mind squash the horrible fact any longer.

_Say it, Robin, admit why this hurts so much. Admit why it hurts that he’s with Charlotte._

Into the pillow she screamed, fully admitting it to herself for the first time: "Because I love him, I LOVE him! Because I want him to be here with ME! Oh GOD!"

She fell onto the bed, onto the pillow she was covering her face with, weeping bitterly, sobbing but still holding the pillow against her face to spare her flatmate. Suddenly the fact that she was taking trouble for someone else in the middle of her devastation made the whole thing seem much more tragic, and her sobs doubled in intensity. Her entire body shuddered with each stifled burst, and everything was ruination and despair and pain.

Then she heard something as though from far away. Her mobile was ringing.

She looked. Cormoran. 

She let the phone ring twice more as she pulled herself together, then picked up.

"Hello? Cormoran?"

“Robin. Hope I didn’t wake you?” It seemed wrong that hearing his voice was balm for her soul, and not torture, but balm it was.

“No, nowhere near asleep. Is everything all right?”

“Generally, yeah. I’m calling because I want to apologise for the way Charlotte’s been acting, and for not saying something to her sooner. I told her in no uncertain terms tonight how much your friendship means to me, and that if she acts like she's been acting to you going forward, she can call us finished."

Robin's mouth dropped open, she gave a small gasp, and her heart jumped and felt suddenly lighter by half--he wasn't being willfully obtuse, nor was he blinded by Charlotte's beauty (not completely anyway). 

He was sleeping with Charlotte, but Robin’s place in the hierarchy was still higher when push came to shove, and now Charlotte knew it for certain, too.

Somewhere, Robin thought, Charlotte was ruminating on Robin fretfully, the mirror of Robin's situation. _”Would Bluey really leave me again, let me go over that common trollop?”_

_Good, let her doubt, I hope it makes her squirm and writhe. Bitch._

“You didn’t have to, I can handle it.”

“You shouldn’t have to, though. Won’t happen again.”

_God damn it, Cormoran! Stop being nice to me!_

“Was it a good evening otherwise?”

“Not really. Actually, Charlotte buggered off after I gave her that ultimatum.”

It should not have given her so much comfort that they would not sleep together this evening, that their outing had been so disastrous, had been poisoned by the mere specter of Robin.

What was the difference, though? They’d be sleeping together again in a day or a week.

But it was still comfort, and there was precious little of that to go around; she should take it where it was offered, senseless or not.

"Buggered off?" She knew her accent on the word "bugger" amused Strike. She could almost see his fond smile.

"Yeah, actually she fucked off to Lisbon for the weekend or some fucking thing."

So perhaps they would not sleep together for several days. It was like numbing a burn with ice.

"Well, sorry it turned out that way."

"Not your fault Charlotte's jealous. Anyway, we needed some time apart to calm down. Thanks for the Radcliffe file, great work as usual."

"Are you back at your flat then?"

"Yeah, sorry I put you through the trouble of scanning these documents." He was quiet and then: "You're a good person, Robin. Honestly. The best I know."

_"Y're a nice pers'n, R'bin."_

_What if I just told him? What if I just said it? Right now._

"Cormoran…"

"Yes?"

But what should she say? ‘I fancy you’? 'I love you'? 'Charlotte's a bitch and you're better off without her'? 'Please come over, I have to tell you something important'?

And where would they go if he didn't reciprocate? What about the job? What about their friendship? Could it survive a direct attempt to sabotage his relationship?

No. If she was going to say anything, she would have to wait until Strike broke it off with Charlotte, would have to hope that day would come again soon. If he was ready to break it off with Charlotte over her treatment of Robin, he couldn’t be all that far in. Could he?

“Thank you, Cormoran. For telling her to stop. I know you know I can handle it, but it means a lot to me, you talking to her."

"Anytime, Robin. Sorry again I didn't do it sooner."

"It's okay. Good night, Cormoran."

"Good night, Robin." He rang off.

Robin plugged her phone in, wiped away the tears and snot that still remained on her face (she’d have to clean that pillow properly tomorrow). The pain was not gone, but it was like she'd taken a heavy painkiller. Or maybe more like an antidote that relieved the effects of poison.

Some night this coming week, it would be obvious Cormoran was going out that night with Charlotte, and she'd have to bear her cross again. It wrenched her insides a little to know it was coming. 

But now, as she laid down with the truth in her mind and his voice in her head instead of her own circling thoughts, she let herself do something she had always, always stopped herself from doing when the urge came.

She thought of their hug on the stairs. His arms strong, enveloping. It had been the most meaningful interaction of her wedding day. He had smelled like a cross between a hospital and a brewery because he was a hero who had just vanquished a monster in battle.

She thought of how she'd felt, how strong the bond between them had felt, almost like a religious experience. How she'd been ready to leave with him if he'd asked, how perfect and right it had felt to be in his arms, to encircle him with her own arms.

As she went to sleep, she allowed herself to believe again, for the first time since her honeymoon, that Cormoran had felt the same way that night.

Her last thought before sweet oblivion took the rest of her pain away was that Charlotte was a transient shadow in his life while she, Robin, was a permanent fixture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does Robin know about Nina? Have I forgotten any women Strike has been with? Let me know, and hope you enjoyed!


End file.
